Diwali 2016-2017 SEMrush study

Diwali is not merely a festival that praises the victory of light over darkness, good over evil, and hope over despair. It is also an event no marketer, eCommerce company, or any other business can miss. Benefits that occur from Diwali’s festive spirit are endless, so backed up with data, marketers should leverage all the opportunities to enhance their business. Before shaping a digital marketing or sales strategy throughout the holiday season, there are a couple of things to keep in mind: you should really know who the purchasing audience is and what is the state of digital affairs, surrounding Diwali.

We know that Diwali highly encourages people to celebrate the holiday with a refreshed look, both spiritual and physical. New clothes, home redecoration are an integral part of the holiday. So here are some interesting insights, coming from browsing through the entire SEMrush suite and Razorpay.

An overall number of transactions is India increases up to 2X during Diwali (+91% growth). It should also be noted that men dominate the expenditure market, while female spenders barely make it up to 30%. Moreover, it is more beneficial to target an audience of 25-34 years old, which accounts for 55% of sales during Diwali, for a younger audience of 18-24 years old is less prone to fall into the festive spirit and make extra expenditures.

So what are people mostly spending on? The top spot belongs to eCommerce that accounts for 22% of the total spent, while travel and home items follow slightly behind (18% and 14% respectively). And if you, as a business, eCommerce, want to attract some online paying customers, you have to think your strategy through. Discounts, offers, and some other incentives are inherent to the holiday, so acquiring some competitive edge, coming from data, is essential.

First of all, Diwali is not merely a local holiday. SEMrush has found that Diwali is a very popular search query across English-speaking countries, with India, USA and UK comprising the top 3 search destinations for Diwali keyword.

Targeting “Diwali” as a keyword, might come up more expensive than you’d expect, it is way above the average CPC (cost-per-click) for India. Diwali’s CPC is Rs 23.62. Yet, 174 million Google pages contain “Diwali” as a keyword. And it should come as no surprise that “diwali lights online” has the highest keyword difficulty, while “diwali crackers online” have the highest long-tail keyword volume. Expensive as it is, Diwali opens up immense possibilities. The search volume for “Diwali” is expected to grow twice when comparing volumes of 2016 vs. 2017. The search volume peaks in October and the lowest month is April; months from August to September show some consistent growth, peaking in October, and eventual decline. This October, Diwali is expected to exceed 2 million searches. But, note, that the most year-to-year growth occurs in February and March.

In terms of advertisers, not much has changed within a year, 2016’s top advertisers keep their top positions in 2017. Who are they? Amazon.in, Shopclues, Snapdeal, Safariindia, and Flipkart, respectively.

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About SEMrush:

SEMrush is an all-in-one digital marketing suite that offers competitive data for more data-driven marketing and business decisions. The software provides website analysis tools and research reports to take the guesswork out of your market research, digital marketing strategy and SEO. It covers areas from SEO and PPC to social media and video advertising research.